So much/so little/so what to write about.

Amidst a whole lot of work at work, I managed to see an Indian flick, a real live celluloid release from the ginormous Bollywood industry, at a real live South Asian-run,, Indo-American, samosa and chai-serving movie theater with a gang from work. I went to a house-warming party, I assembled a new TV stand and helped (a little) with it’s installation, and had a couple of friends over (see new media stand installation) suburban barbecue style.

On the opposite of a lighter note, had my moms lived, and I almost wrote chosen to live on account of it feels that way, she would be 80 years old today. Instead, she’s frozen in her early 70s. And, of course, all of the years before those last ones, the ones with the paddle balls and Dr. Scholl’s and sneakers that make up my memories.

Apart from my own birthday demarcating my own mortality falling so close to the anniversary of her birth, a couple of notes of the manufactured melodrama reminded me of Pat. One good thing about the technology I over-use and over-obsess about is access. It kind of makes all things new again and as old movies creep into the public domain, my fancy cellular phone can grab me a young Cary Grant or Gary Cooper.

Way back when, before menstruation was a worry instead of menopause. Oh, wait, strike that, I don’t actually remember very well the time before menstruation. I suppose I was a little girl once, but it didn’t last very long in my precocious life. Anyway, in the olden days, I have to admit that Pat wasn’t all up in the worrying about bedtime for her youngest. She rather indulged me, you might say. I think it was because she liked company while watching old movies on late.

One thing I really miss since cable happened is the late, late movies and the random time of the day movie features. Dialing for dollars, creature double features, and our steady Sunday night date, along with a whole lot of other folks in the Boston area, Frank Avruch and The Great Entertainment.

We watched film noir, musicals, mysteries, murders, tearjerkers, dramas, sophisticated comedies. Whatever they had on tap in the olden days of televisions with tubes and dials, you basically set it and forget it. Although, in the absence of remote controls, in the dark days before people even imagined a clicking plastic box with magic buttons, one solution was large families. As the youngest, I was kept around to change the channel. Come to think of it, there’s a good chance Pat let me stay up and watch the movies with her was so there was someone to turn the TV off at the end. Footsteps saved.

Today, I kind of hate the choices that cable provides. Instead of rolling with what came on and deciding on the merits of a small handful of options, you now can spend hours combing through and deciding among hundreds and hundreds of things and ultimately choose nothing.

I loved Pat’s commentary. She was not one to suffer schmaltz and faux sentiment quietly. Corny got called out. An enigma was her protestations against the foolish excess of elaborate, Busby Berkeley musicals and their ilk. Yet, she watched them all. I have yet to meet anyone who knew more about Esther Williams and her whole splashing oeuvre of work.

By the way, love the internet. Who knew Esther was hawking, appropriately enough, swimsuits?

Pat also seemed to have a hard time accepting any plot line of a strong woman in the face of adversity. The whole Greer Garson as Mrs. Miniver, stiff upper lip drama just pissed her the fuck off at some core place. I don’t know if it was the force of the melodrama, written, directed and otherwise predetermined to squeeze a little juice out of your tear ducts at expected intervals. Or maybe it was the strong and virtuous noble female lead persevering just rubbed her wrong.

Some of me, suspects it was the presumed nobility of Greer Garson’s women. Somewhere in my mother’s own strong struggle, I think she felt no drama, no glory, nothing noble. Nope, it was just a simple life she was slogging through, because that’s what you do. Suffice it to say, Pat wasn’t all about that particularly brand of histrionics. She had way more fun with the drama of the day to day, the mundane. That shit is where she could really sink her teeth.

Who needs the Blitz of London, when you have a field mouse loose in the house?

She accused me of threatening her and locked herself in the bathroom screaming at me through the door at me to leave her alone. Sadistic tormentor I was that day. I had been beckoned to her home to empty the mousetrap that had successfully been tripped. A grim murine reaper.

I did what I was told to do and collected the carcass in a paper bag. I wrongfully assumed the corpus mousey, ensconced and wrapped in brown paper, was rendered harmless and wondered into the living room to ask what to do with my bundle. My mother, no longer in the flower of youth, bolted from the room, Usain-Bolt style. Fast and, I discovered, angry.

There was a solid 10 minutes before I coaxed her out from behind the locked door, promising I had brought the dreaded, dead beast outside and disposed of it far away from her and her bitter memories of its torment (and mine).

The Bollywood movie I saw the other night, Delhi 6, reminded me of late night’s with Frank Avruch and Pat. The movie had it all. Family, romance, angry townspeople (instead of ranchers and cattlemen in old black and white, there’re modern Hindus and Muslims), random songs, awkward exposition, a hero and a heroine and the verge of tears hyper-dramatic conclusion. I hadn’t felt that way in a movie since I was a kid. I only wish the tearjerking scenes succeeded in manipulating me. Not sure if reading English subtitles dampened the intended affect.

If there were an 80-year-old Pat, I wonder if I could convince her to watch an Indian movie over a cup of chai. Or maybe just to nibble on a samosa.

For her, in spite of what she taught me about caution, despite the world that limited her chance to follow her desires, for Pat, I hope to see more of the world and try more and do more. If you got sneakers, where them to work tomorrow. I will.

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